iMac won't wake up from sleep using keyboard or mouse

Hello,

I have a 2012 super dooper latest iMac that's only a month old and won't wake up from sleep.

Rang Apple Care and eventually was passed to senior techie type who solved my issue.

I already had a Bluetooth Trackpad with my old iMac.

The new iMac came with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.

So 3 Bluetooth inputs...I also use a Graphics talent for photography work.

John, the very knowledgeable man, said he had seen a while ago that 3 Bluetooth inputs can cause sleep probs.

He suggested disconnecting one, so I took off the mouse.

Bingo, wakes from sleep everytime...I use 30 minutes sleep and 15 minutes for the desktop.

Not an obvious solution but it worked straight out of the box.

Steve

We've had the same problem with our MacBook Pro, though we aren't using bluetooth devices with it. What works for us is to shut the computer, make sure it is shut tight and watch for the sleep mode on the light, it should take only a few seconds. When you see that open the lid and it always wakes up for us.

Sweet mother of pearl! I unpluged my Belkin 7 port USB, no other changes, and she wakes up! Thanks so much, this was WAY to frustrating, almost threw out the machine and went back to breaking windows.

Yeah!

Pshaw! Seemed to work at first, selected sleep mode and after a few minutes I could wake it up. Overnight however could not wake. Tried to turn off Internet sharing, no help. Will try wired mouse, this issue continues to suck.

Just wanted to pass along that in my experience-- using both a wired keyboard and trackball-- when the computer is _actually_ sleeping, only the keyboard will wake it, not the mouse or trackball.

My issue seems somewhat related to problems with the USB ports and power to the USB ports for the Mac itself. My IT person thought a powered hub might help, but we couldn't even get the powered hub to work.

I have the same set up at work and at home, and normally no issue with wake from sleep at home. A couple of times in the last 2 weeks though, I've had to unplug/replug my keyboard from the USB port.

Hope you're able to get things working. Agree that this issues continues to suck. Wish Apple was serious about addressing the problems.

I have an iMac 27" and I recently had the hard drive replaced by Apple due to a known fault. It seemed to be working okay but it's just started playing up today. I left it on in the background while I went to do some stuff - I was away for no more than half an hour - and when I came back, I couldn't get it started. Eventually I had to unplug it and then it worked. But to be honest, for the price I'm paying, I want something that works as it should do.

Between this and a MacBook that died on me just after Christmas, I'm really beginning to wonder if investing in a Mac is such a good idea.

my first iMac (27" late 2012) exhibited problem with the fan going on full blast upon connecting to power, quiet when the machine was booted, and on full blast again when the machine was off. called apple, and got a replacement.

I am now on my third replacement iMac, the last two are exhibiting identical issue with sleep: the machines will go to sleep and will not wake up, and in addition the power button is disabled, i.e. pressing the power button will not restart the machine.

I am guessing that the SMC crashed, as the only course of recovery is to reset the SMC by removing power, pressing the power button for a while, and attempting to restart (does not work all the time, so I sometimes have to repeat the SMC reset procedure).

after doing some research on the net, I found how to view the hibernate mode, and saw that my machine was set to hibernate mode 5, which is NOT an approved setting, see below.

I used the system pref -> energy saver and clicked restore defaults which restored the hibernatemode to 0.

HOWVER, upon plugging in a powered USB hub, the hibernate mode was automagically reset to 5.

once at hibernate mode 5, putting the machine to sleep manually exhibited the same symptoms, i.e. not wake from sleep and disabled power button.

this was done with an apple care tech on the phone, and he recommended replacing the iMac once again, and sending me a fourth replacement!

overnight I played some more with this

I reset the hibernate mode but this time to 3 and I tried a different USB hub.

hibernate mode stayed at 3 after plugging in the USB hub.

I then created a small shell script to monitor and display the hibernate mode:

function showhibernate() {

while true

do echo -n `date` " ";pmset -g|grep hibernatemode;sleep 10

done

}

and executed it overnight

this evening after I came home from work, I noticed that the hibernate mode somehow was switched from 3 to 7!?

unfortunately, I did not have the echo `date` on the first version, so I do not know when it was switched from 3 to 7.

however, the machine did wake up from sleep... (so it seems that 7 is not as bad as 5?)

I am guessing that some powered USB hubs cause unexpected changes to the hibernatemode, which in turn cause the SMC to crash, disabling the power button.

why plugging in some powered USB hubs but not others will cause the hibernatemode to switch to 5?

why hibernate mode would automagically switch from 3 to 7?

neither 5 nor 7 are documented in the man page, and the only recommended modes are 0 3 and 25:

We do not recommend modifying hibernation settings. Any changes you make are not supported. If you choose to do so anyway, we recommend using one of these three settings. For your sake and mine, please don't use anything other 0, 3, or 25.

For now I cancled the shipment of the fourth replacement, as this seems to be an issue affecting all iMacs (and a specific USB powered hub), so that a new machine will not resolve the issue...

I've solved a similair wake up problem with my mac mini (late 2012 w/ 10.8.2, direct wired keyboard and mouse)... My energy saver settings are: computer sleep 10, display sleep 5, hard drive sleep true, wake for network false, power button sleep false, start automatically true.

Problem:

Waking up the computer after long periods of computer sleep required the power button. Short periods of sleep (< a few hours), the center mouse button would correctly restore the previous state...

The solution was to disable auto power off (deep sleep) - use Terminal program (Apps->Utilities->Terminal):

Show settings:

pmset -g

Change:

sudo pmset -a autopoweroff 0

Now restoring the previous state works after days of a 'sleeping'. Learn more with 'man pmset' in the terminal - I hope the energy saver controls show more settings in some future version/update....

Good luck...

I had never had this problem until Apple just replaced my iMac HDD as part of a replacement program for mac's of of my generation (some HDD issues somewhere I guess) ... now it internittently won't wake from keyboard or mouse. I have the computer set to sleep never (as I had trouble with the wake on network settings and my apple tv), so it seems to be related to the display sleeping, rather than the computer.

I'm trying to find everything else that might have changed at the same time as the HDD being replaced, as from reading through this it seems some people have had this issue from software changes and/or hardware that has been added.

Fingers crossed!?

I too am having this issue.

I have a Mid 2010 27-inch i5 iMac. The computer is set for the screen to disable after 10 minutes, and for regular sleep to take effect after 1 hour.

If I disable the screen manually using a hot corner, I can wake the computer up anytime before it goes to sleep. If it goes to sleep after 1 hour, I can "wake" it up, but the screen does not reenable. You can hear the computer's hard drive spin back on, as if it's awake, but the screen does not renenable.

Here's what I've tried:

Reset SMC

Reset PRAM

Closed any app preventing sleep as detailed by pmset in Terminal

Reset the power management settings

Deleted the /var/vm/sleepimage

Deleted the powermanagement file (called something else I think?)

Removed external hard drive and USB hub

I thought that this may be a result of a recent third party memory upgrade, but I've verified that the memory is correct for the computer, and have tried switching the slots they are in, etc. The only thing I'd rather not do is remove the memory (as I obviously need it).

So at this point I'm at a loss. Has anyone had sucess with another solution that I haven't given a shot yet?

Thanks!

I have a similar problem, and tried many of the fixes recommended above (disconnecting hardware and monitors, changing screensaver and energy settings, testing programs, etc.-- though I didn't read all 34 pages of posts!).

The problem became less frequent on its own after a few OS X updates (now on 10.8.3). But I think I've figured out what causes the problem for me: Microsoft Powerpoint Mac 2011. If Powerpoint is running with the display goes to sleep, I cannot wake up my iMac.

I'll just have to remember to close Powerpoint and see if I have no further incidents. If so, it will just be another thing to make me move completely away from Microsoft Office (Outlook Calendar and Word are what keep me using it).

I have had the wake from sleep issues and have posted previously on this thread regarding my experiences with it. As an aside, I do not typically use Powerpoint, nor has it been in play when I've had the issue on my iMac. But that doesn't mean it's not what solves it for you. There are so many different experiences people have had with this-- and with fixes-- that it's all very strange.

Anyway, I hope this is the silver bullet for you, while at the same time noting it is not in play in my wake from sleep issues.

Hi Kym, did you ever get a reply to your query about a reliable, powered 7-port USB hub?

Update to my own post a week ago: I've had no issues since I started to make sure Powerpoint is shut down before I walk away from my computer. It's a pain since I have to work with Powerpoint regularly, and I am accustomed to leaving programs and documents open for days at a time.

Ive been having issues with the sleep wake thing for a while now on my iMac 2009 21.5 inch. Reformatted the hard drive and couldn't re-install lion, worked with rep on the phone for 1.5 hours to try to troubleshoot the issue with no luck. Shut the computer down for a week, then turned it on and voila lion started installing. Ran another disc check because the first one had said the HDD was bad, no error codes this time. Then last night it started having issues again with the black screen and wont wake up thing. So today I linked it to a wireless keyboard I use with my iPad Mini and pulled the wired keyboard off. Reset the SMC after linking the bluetooth keyboard and now no issues again. I just have a feeling this is a Mountain Lion thing ordered a new copy of Snow Leopard, I am going to revert to that once I get it. Never had any issues with Snow Leopard.